Every outbound link tells a story about your relationship with the page you link to. Google’s guidance (last updated 10 December 2025 as we read it) gives three optional labels for the links where that story is not “editorial recommendation”.
Best for: editors, affiliate teams, community managers and SEO leads.
What Google says
- For regular links you expect Google to fetch and parse without qualification, you do not need a
relattribute. rel="sponsored"marks advertisements and paid placements.nofollowwas previously recommended for these and is still acceptable, butsponsoredis preferred.rel="ugc"is recommended for user-generated content links such as comments and forum posts. To reward trusted contributors, you might remove it from links by members who have consistently made high-quality contributions.rel="nofollow"is for cases where the other values do not apply and you would rather Google not associate your site with, or crawl, the linked page. For links inside your own site, use a robots.txt disallow rule.- You can combine values, separated by spaces or commas, such as
ugc nofollow. - Marked links will generally not be followed, but the linked pages may still be found through sitemaps or other sites’ links.
- To stop indexing, allow crawling and use
noindex.
Decision table
| The link is | Use | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Your own editorial recommendation | No rel | Nothing to add |
| Paid, sponsored or an advertisement | sponsored | nofollow is still acceptable |
| An affiliate link where you earn a commission | sponsored (our reading) | Google points to its affiliate programs guidance |
| In a comment, forum post or profile | ugc | Consider removing it for proven contributors |
| A link you do not want to vouch for | nofollow | Use it when other values do not apply |
| A link to a page on your own site you want uncrawled | robots.txt | rel is the wrong tool |
What to do: step by step
| Step | Owner | Time | How to check | Done when |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1. Export outbound links | SEO | 30 min | A crawl export of external a href values | A sorted list exists |
| 2. Group by relationship | Editor | 45 min | Editorial, paid, affiliate, user-generated | Each group has a label |
| 3. Check the paid group | Partnerships | 30 min | Does each sponsored link carry rel="sponsored"? | No unlabelled paid links |
| 4. Check user content | Community manager | 30 min | Do comment and forum links carry ugc? | Template sets it by default |
| 5. Set a trusted-member rule | Community manager | 30 min | Decide who earns links without ugc | A written rule exists |
| 6. Spot-check live pages | SEO | 20 min | View source on five pages | Output matches the plan |
Common mistakes
- Marking every outbound link
nofollowout of habit. Editorial links need nothing. - Leaving affiliate or paid placements unlabelled.
- Expecting
nofollowto keep a page out of Google. Usenoindexwith crawling allowed. - Using
relfor internal pages. Use robots.txt instead.
Related: links Google can crawl, spam policies in plain English and noindex vs robots.txt. Labelling does not guarantee any ranking outcome.
